It All Adds Up

Audio By Carbonatix

I’m sure that nearly everybody has experienced what I’m about to describe. There’s probably one outside corner of your house or your condo or your apartment building where stuff tends to collect. I’m talking about that one corner where the wind keeps blowing in the same way and forces the leaves, twigs, and little pieces of paper and plastic to collect at one spot against the building. It can happen in the yard or driveway.

Wherever it happens, that stuff just slowly builds up over time and creates an eyesore. If you’re a more particular person, I’m sure you know exactly the corner I’m talking about and actively keep an eye on it to make sure you’re keeping it clean as fast as it piles up. If you’re not so concerned about how your home’s exterior looks, you might not even realize you have a spot where stuff collects in the yard.

I really don’t have much interest in how you handle these pileups in your yard, but I am interested in helping you identify how things in your marriage and family life can tend to do the same thing. It is just a fact of life; things tend to pile up. Outside, it’s leaves and trash. In your marriage and family life, the “leaves” are other issues like anger, misunderstandings, unforgiveness, inattentiveness, sarcasm, deceit, destructive patterns, and a whole lot of other negative or relationship-harming behaviors.

Before you realize it, they add up. They pile on top of each other, and pretty soon, a corner is full of things you’re struggling with. Too often, I think we let that pile of issues continue to grow because we know that dealing with it will take more effort than we want to give. Today, I encourage you to clean some of those corners out. That might start with you needing to have a tough conversation that you’ve been avoiding or asking for forgiveness and working to change a habit or behavior.

In the same way that cleaning up a physical space starts with an intentional choice to make a change, cleaning up habits and relationships does too. Just like cleaning up a physical space may require getting a little more “into it” than you’d prefer, cleaning up habits and relationships does too. You might need to mentally prepare yourself for a tough conversation the same way you need to put on gloves and gather your supplies to start cleaning up the yard.

The analogy will break down if you try to follow it too much further, but I’m doing my best to remind you that you know what it takes to clean things up. I’d guess that you do it in the yard and house often. The work and preparation required to do that is not the same as cleaning up relationship issues, but the process is surprisingly similar. You might not know exactly how a certain conversation will go, but that’s true of lots of home projects too. The best way to learn how to navigate an obstacle is often to jump in and get started.

When you jump in and start cleaning up the piles of negative behaviors in your family and personal life, I believe you’ll see improvements. And seeing those improvements will encourage you to keep going! When you do that consistently over a period of time, you and your family will be winning more often at home.